SAMSUNG GALAXY GRAND 2 Review – GRANDER OR JUST BIGGER?

FIRST IMPRESSIONS

The Samsung Galaxy Grand 2 is a typical smartphone from the Samsung factory. It is comparatively thinner than the previous edition and comes with a slightly bigger display. The faux leather in white looks elegant but the cheap metal around the sides doesn\’t add any shine to it. The volume keys are placed on the left followed by the power key on the right. The audio jack faces upward whilst the USB port is placed at the bottom. Grander? Let\’s poke deeper.

REVIEW

The specifications of a phone go hand in hand with the price you pay for it. Going in line with that, we get a 5.25 inch LCD display with thin bezel sides giving us a maximum screen size. The display is at a resolution 720x1280p at 280ppi which is a downgrade compared to the S Series and the Note Series. Colours look fine and smooth as the screen is HD and viewing angles go well too. The Galaxy Grand 2 comes with an 8MP auto focus rear camera with LED flash and at 3264×2448 pixels and a 1.9MP front facing camera. Samsung offers us a lot of scene modes as always which can be seen in other phones as well including Geo-tagging, touch focus, face and smile detection, image stabilization. The pictures taken in day light were presentable and full of colour. Indoor pictures were decent as well. Pictures taken at night might not be too clear, with visible grain and some noise. Videos are recorded in 720p for both rear and front facing camera.At 163g, the Grand 2 supports 2 SIM card slots and a microSD card slot. The phone runs Android 4.3 Jelly Bean along with TouchWiz UI. We noticed a little lag while using the camera but apart from that, the OS works pretty smoothly. It runs like an S3 or a Note 2, with similar benchmarks to boot. It supports a quad-core 1.2 GHz processor along with Qualcomm MSM8226 Snapdragon 400 chipset and 1.5GB of RAM. It offers only 8GB internal storage out of which a mere 4GB and a little more is available for the user. It does offer expansion up to 64GB via microSD. The speakers are good and when the headphones are attached, they give a good and powerful sound. Might even be more powerful than the S3 just in comparison. The 2600mAh battery did not give us any problems. Rather if we compare it to other smartphones, even after watching videos and using continuous Wi-Fi, it lasted us conveniently for 14 hours.Being dual SIM, it may drain the battery a little more when both are active. It doesn\’t support an LED indicator for incoming calls or notifications which is rather surprising. Makes you wonder why they missed out on such a small, yet necessary feature.

VERDICT

Except for the fact that you get a good battery life, decent camera and most importantly, dual SIM functionality, you won\’t find anything else which will grip you. The price you pay might be a little over the top for slightly better than average features. But if you don\’t wish to invest in smaller brands with unproven track records, then the Grand 2 isn\’t that bad an option in this price.